Custom Timed Subscription Schedules in SSRS

Question

I see that in the SQL Server Reporting Services 2005 Report Manager there is the capability to schedule reports for specific times (ie every weekday at a particular time).

What I would like though is more control -- ie every weekday, but only between certain dates of the year -- for example, getting sales figures every day starting 6 weeks before Christmas and ending 1 week after Christmas. There is a table that has the dates. How do I set that up in SQL Server Reporting Services 2005?

Answer 1

If you have Enterprise Edition you can create a Data Driven Subscription, whereby you generate a table of the report recipients and parameters and then point the report subscription to the table. You have complete control over how the table gets populated so you can make sure it only gets populated on the days you want the report to go out (the subscription would run every day but if the table is empty, it doesn't go out to anyone).

Answer 2

You can do what you ask in SSRS.

At the bottom of the Schedule details form, you can specify a start date and end date for the subscription.

You would however need to update those dates every year but you can setup a SSIS job to to that. You need to update the "StartDate" and "EndDate" columns in the "Schedule" table in your reporting services database (default name is "ReportServer").

Answer 3

Create a data driven subscription which calls a procedure, the procedure will determine the correct day (lets say, 1st business day of month). Have the schedule run every day, it will fire off the procedure which will only return on the specific day.

Answer 4

1. I don't think there is a way to customize the Report Manager interface to show the custom schedule because there is a part of it that is managed by SSIS.

2. Yes you can remove the Subscription feature for some users. You can do that in SSMS, when connected to your report Server, in the Security | Roles section. The permission that manages the subscription feature is named : "Manage individual subscriptions". By removing it, your end users won't be able to create or update their subscriptions schedules.

Hope this helps!